This is the third in the series on running a traffic test. The first two articles in the series can be viewed at:
Part 1 – Traffic Test – Baseline Data
Part 2 – Traffic Test – Focusing on Performance

As we discussed in Part 2, what’s vital in running a traffic test is understanding the performance, both positive and negative. The data is the data but interpreting what it’s telling you is far more important if you are wanting to develop long-term value from your domain traffic.

So how is the real live test portfolio progressing so far? The following two charts show the overall trend lines are all heading in the right direction. Despite the time of year and the typical overall decline in advertising spend over the northern hemisphere summer, revenue is continuing to trend upwards.

The second chart clearly shows the reason for this is due to the normalised RPM (or plRPM as we call it at ParkLogic) is also trending upwards as the optimisation algorithms continue their work. For those of you that are unaware, RPM stands for Revenue Per Thousand - more of per thousand what shortly. It’s at this point that I’m going to take a little detour to explain a few things about plRPM and how it differs from RPM.

I’ve had a long-standing reseller account with Enom for many, many years and being a bit lazy I really haven’t checked the pricing for a while. I had the need to register a .com recently and as is my habit I found what I was after and went through to my shopping cart. Boy was I in for a surprise!

I couldn’t believe it but Enom was trying to charge $13.50 for .com domain? Considering that I also use Epik for my personal domains I’m more familiar with paying $8.49. The difference doesn’t sound very much until you multiply it over a lot of domains…..suddenly that five star vacation is getting further away with every registration.

For those of you that are wondering why I didn’t just register the domain at Epik in the first place then you’d be asking a great question. Call it stupidity on my part and I mistake I don’t plan on making into the future.

When did all these pricing changes at Enom happen? I actually have no specific date but wouldn't be surprised if it related to being purchased by Tucows. There’s one thing for sure, the remainder of my domains at Enom will shortly be finding another home.

I’ve never been a believer in going on diets to lose weight…..in fact, I think there a load of rubbish. You only have to ask the simple question, “What happens when you go off the diet?” to realise the yoyo mentality of on/off what we put in our mouths is pretty stupid. What I am a BIG believer of is “Lifestyle Change”.

A positive lifestyle change is making a decision to permanently alter the way you behave for the betterment of who you are. For instance, a number of years ago my wife and I decided to cut a lot of meat out of our diets and had plant-based meals for about eighty-percent of the time. A few things happened….

The first thing we discovered is some absolutely yummy vegetarian dishes…..and also some shocking ones! Vege-dudes, please don’t try and mimic meat…..you fail! Just be happy with eating really good plant meals and leave the carnivores to themselves. Just of the record, I still like the taste of meat, so I haven’t become a veggie fanatic.

If you’re going to do a lifestyle change in the area of food, then you have to like what you’re eating or you’re going to become miserable and the change won't stick. We tried a heap of different recipes and found a bunch that were awesome. We eat these and forget the terrible ones.

The second thing that happened was my regular blood tests (at fifty I started getting these) caused my doctor to ask me what I’m doing differently. All the various indicators were incredibly positive and I was feeling great!

This is the second in the series on running a traffic test. The first may be viewed by clicking on the link below:

Part 1 – Traffic Test – Baseline Data

One of the challenges of running a traffic test is to determine which metrics should be used for comparison purposes. I’ve had so many people tell me that all that matters is revenue…..I beg to disagree.

Although revenue is a very important metric it is not the only metric that should be paid attention to. For example, let’s imagine the baseline data for an education related domain is from May and the traffic test started mid-June.

Many education advertisers wind down during June and therefore the pay-out rates per click will typically be less for this type of traffic. In addition, depending upon the type of education domain the traffic is likely to be less as well.

What we need to do is to interpret what the data is telling us and not just look at it and say, “The revenue is down, I’m pulling the test.”

One of the challenges in running a traffic test is using views as a comparison metric. Because every provider counts views differently then using this metric can end up becoming quite subjective....that being said, sometimes it's all that is provided in the baseline data so it's better than nothing.

Many years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with a person that controlled a very large domain portfolio. They were running a traffic test with us and we were taking them through our typical analysis and discussing what was happening at the individual domain level. This surprised the prospective client as they said they’d never done that before.

Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed by the number of things on your todo list or find yourself fighting battles on numerous fronts at once only to discover someone’s planted a knife in your back? If that’s you then keep on reading…..

Thankfully I didn’t have to pluck a metaphorical knife from my back but my todo list was ever expanding. I’m no stranger to working hard so naturally I convinced myself that working longer and more intensely was the solution…..boy was I wrong.

The interesting thing about my situation was that I was juggling way too many business opportunities, all the while ParkLogic was having one record month after another. So, I found myself working fifteen-hour days with a maximum of six hours sleep before hitting my desk once again. You can do this in the short-term but it wasn’t long before it started becoming the longer-term….which is never a good thing.

What did I do about the situation? I went away. Yep, I took off for a couple of nights into a beautiful spot in the country to do some heavy thinking. To be fair, my wife said, “You’re miserable, go and get your head right!”